TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Anna Dalosi
To bring together young entrepreneurs, youth leaders and youth workers from European organizations with main objective to equip young people with key skills, competencies and values in order to succeed in entrepreneurial activities.
The objectives were:
To promote entrepreneurship;
To suggest a holistic approach to entrepreneurship;
To empower youth to address important issues in their communities with entrepreneurial solutions, to turn their ideas in action
To equip young entrepreneurs, youth leaders and youth workers with key skills and competences to succeed in entrepreneurship and;
To create sustainable network of young entrepreneurs, professionals, youth leaders, youth workers to work on the topic of entrepreneurship, which may further result in strategic partnership projects between partner organisations;
To inspire participants by creating role models of successful entrepreneurs through non formal education methods;
To introduce participants to various entrepreneurial models and values;
To share national practices in entrepreneurship, as well as challenges local communities face to address them with creative solutions;
To offer innovative methodology based on art ant theater techniques to develop an entrepreneurial idea through usage of out-of-box thinking;
To involve female entrepreneurs
To introduce participants to funding opportunities, offered by Erasmus+ and European networks for entrepreneurs.
30 participants from 10 countries - Cyprus, Albania, Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, United Kingdom and Ukraine. The participants were Youth Workers, Youth Leaders, and Youth Trainers active in the youth field and willing to build their skills and capacity to develop quality initiatives and educational activities to promote entrepreneurship. They all had diverse backgrounds and levels of experience in the field of entrepreneurship. Priority was given to people with a disability status, to those who were registered as unemployed in their Public Employment Service and to those with low income based on their income-tax return certificate. Of all the participants of the “ARTrepreneurship” project, 5 were people with disabilities.
The project included a 7-day training course and 10 days for personal learning commitments, peer learning, online work, etc. During the training activity we used the Business Model Canvas, a popular strategic management and entrepreneurial tool.
All working activities aimed at fostering intercultural learning and exchange between participants from diverse backgrounds. The methodology included:
- Formal and non-formal participatory methods (team building activities, energisers; world café, live library, case studies, brainstorming, meetings with successful startupers, presentations, info-sessions, simulation games, reflection groups, and more);
- Learning by experience;
- Creative learning (through drawing, textiles, photography, music, etc.);
- Mentoring, to support participants to develop their project ideas.
The participants improved their skills and competencies certified with Youthpass, the European Certificate of non– formal education.
The training developed and broadened the understanding of entrepreneurship, its dimensions and relations with the labour market. The participants develop their readiness to support their organisations in addressing unemployment and promoting entrepreneurship.
The presence of 5 people with disabilities in this training had an enormous impact on the participants and will empower many young people.
The project ARTrepreneurship is expected to have an important impact beyond the participants. Through their involvement, the people involved in all the phases either as project managers, staff members, board members or volunteers developed a wide range of leadership and management skills.
Partner organisations had the opportunity to extend the international dimension of their work, to learn about non-formal methods of entrepreneurial education and to strengthen their relationships with their stakeholders. The project provided an opportunity to establish sustainable partnerships for further cooperation and projects.
As a result of this project, the participants and their organisations are now more prepared to encourage entrepreneurship among youth in an efficient way, as well as to organise quality projects within the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union and beyond.
In the long run the project will benefit the communities of the partners as well as the international community with the implementation of transnational initiatives based on the network of organisations established during the project.
I was a full- time Trainer and the Educational Adviser of SEAL CYPRUS in this project. I designed the working program and the evaluation process.